Louis Theroux and Jimmy Savile - "It's Only Obvious if You Know the Answer"

Am I jumping on a bandwagon here by posting about this? Probably, but I write when I have something to say, so I'll say it. Firstly, I was not impressed by today's Daily Fail piece on the "Savile" documentary by Louis Theroux last night, with the headline containing the words "viewers left sickened by....". This piece was adding to the voices of those who imagined that Louis should have seen Savile for exactly what he was, and acted like some kind of hero back in the early 2000s, doing what no-one else had been able to do, and help bring Savile to justice.

It's on record that Louis did report to the BBC that he had seen Savile acting inappropriately with a young woman in a restaurant, but nothing was done about it. How exactly would Louis have been able to help bring Savile down anyway, even if he had been fully aware of exactly the type of monster he was dealing with? The Jangly Beast had evaded police prosecution, had a history of being litigious, and he had obtained Louis' private home address for goodness sake! He also had many friends in high places. What could Louis have done that no-one else was able to do?

It's easy to be an expert with the benefit of hindsight. It's easy to say "Oh I always knew Savile was a wrong 'un and I hated 'Jim'll Fix It'". For some people that statement is genuinely true. But "Jim'll Fix It" had millions of viewers and ran for about 20 years, with no shortage of people writing in and asking for their dreams to be made reality. If the amount of people who say they hated it, really did, then surely it wouldn't have stayed on the air. Let's face it, whilst in later years most of us thought Savile eccentric, we were duped. There's no shame in admitting that. It's on him, not on us. A psychopath might give clues which, with hindsight, were obvious, but generally they are very good at covering their tracks.

Plenty of us have known people who we later found out were capable of horrible things. I myself worked with a man years ago in a well known Irish bank, and he seemed a lovely man. Very mild mannered and inoffensive. A family man. Imagine my shock when, years later, I was reading the paper on my lunch hour in another job, and saw that man's face on one of the pages, with an article underneath it reporting that he had committed suicide because he'd been prosecuted for having child porn on his computer.

As Louis Theroux himself said in the documentary last night "Evil people can do good things". Savile knew how to charm people. I can remember even feeling a bit sorry for Savile in the original documentary, aired back in 2001, as he didn't seem to have any real friends and lived a very solitary life. I even found it funny when he was evading Louis' questions and saying "He's on the ropes!".  I can understand how he must have charmed Louis. Even though Louis had heard unsavoury things about Savile, along with so many others, that is not the same as having proof. Savile was too well connected to be touched anyway. If police forces couldn't bring him down (it's known that he was a suspect in the Yorkshire Ripper case, for instance) , what chance had anyone else got? So for people who pick out various BBC personalities and say that it's all very well admitting after his death that they'd heard the rumours - well what could they have done about it exactly? He would have still gotten away with it even if they reported him. However it came to be that way, the fact was, he was untouchable because of whoever and whatever he was involved with, and there wasn't a hope in hell he was going to be brought down because it would have implicated too many others in high places. Same as another celebrity, still living, that I believe will not be touched until after his death, when it will all come out.

And yes, I liked "Jim'll Fix It". I liked Jimmy Savile as a presenter. And, as hard and horrific as it is to admit it, I thought he seemed good with children and was the best person for the show. I watched things he also presented like "Play It Safe" as well. I'd enjoy it when he'd turn up as a "talking head" on retrospective programmes. In his later years he seemed ever more eccentric, and became more embarrassing, and this did also come across in Louis' original documentary on him. But no, I won't try to sound more perceptive than I actually was, and pretend that I was never hoodwinked by him, because I was. And I don't think there is any shame in me, or anyone else, being in that predicament. A paedophile and psychopath is not going to advertise it are they, except to those they actually abuse. Sure, they'll give clues, and tell us what they are sometimes, but we'll laugh and dismiss it as a joke until it's all come out in the open.

It was before his death that I was told, by a friend of a friend on FB, to Google Savile and Jersey. I did, and then.... well, then I knew. So the revelations after his death were not a surprise to me, except for the sheer scale of his crimes. Since then, I've come to believe, partly from the research done by my friend Thomas Sheridan, that Savile was more of a monster than most people would ever or could ever countenance. Here is a blog to start you all off with, if you want to go down that route, and do search out Thomas' other work on Savile.

So Louis Theroux, I believe, did a good job in the original documentary, and in last night's one. He did what he could do, with the knowledge and perception that he had. Yes, he was charmed to a certain extent (that's on Savile, not on Louis). He is human, not psychic. What is obvious now was not obvious then. So keep on being a brilliant documentary maker Louis - be proud, not guilty.